Pressdog.com

I (Heart) I-29

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 02/02/00)

I’m starting to have an unnatural affection for Interstate 29.

I think about it every day. I long for the way it feels under my radials. The intimate way it reveals itself to me. Those secret little rough patches we share.

Just a ribbon of concrete running along the western edge of Iowa, in the shadow of the Loess (luss) Hills. But I love it. God help me, I do love it so.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on the stretch of I-29 between Omaha, Neb. and Sioux City, Iowa. You’ll find me driving there on Mondays around 6 a.m. and Fridays around 6 p.m.

Interstate 29 and I started our torrid affair on Nov. 22, when I got a new job. The only catch was the new job is in Des Moines (da moyn) Iowa, which is 200 miles and three hours from my house in Sioux City.

Everything would be OK if someone would just buy my house in Sioux City. Slapped it on the market in early November where it has sat like a rotting corpse ever since. And it’s not like this is a sagging shack. Four-bedroom, two-bath ranch in a great neighborhood. ($111,000 and it’s yours.) “Yeah, whatever,” potential buyers say. “It’s only got a one-car attached garage.” Well excuse me for using up your oxygen supply. One car attached? What was I thinking trying to unload this place on you? HEY, this is a GREAT HOUSE. I’d drag this house with me to Des Moines if I could, OK? Maybe you should go pay $19,000 more for a cheaply built housing-development house with all the charm and uniqueness of a K-Mart, two saplings out front and TWO CAR ATTACHED-FREAKING-GARAGE.

We bought our house in August 1995 because it was perfect for us. Right school district, great condition, close to stuff, low-maintenance, big trees. And it’s been an excellent house. Our mistake was assuming we’d live to be old and gray there. Watch the kids do bicycle kicks for the local high school team some day. How stupid were we? Nothing lasts forever, especially in the gigabyte-driven world. My parents still live in the house where I grew up. But my parents are 65. When my job in Sioux City moved to California, my wife and I decided not to go with it. Let’s just say the non-mimimum-wage job market for writers in Sioux City is “slim.” (Not that I tend to get pissy about it or anything.) My Dad told me I should have been an engineer. But no, I had to WRITE. Sheesh.

So I chose to take a job in Des Moines rather than San Diego, California. People look at me like I’m a savant or something when they hear that. “I’d wipe out a mall with a bomb to go to San Diego,” they say. I’m just freaky, I guess, but I like the Midwest, and I’m getting a little tired of defending that preference to the Weather Worshipers out there. OK, we have winter. So get over it. Geez, it’s not like it rains lava or freezes you stiff on the way to your car. You’d think that it was minus 34 in August here the way people recoil in horror.

San Diego is a great place with great people. I still love the company I left. It’s just not for me. I’m too stoic and introverted to make it the Land Of Sun. Out there you’re expected to talk to mingle with total strangers (it’s called “networking”) while sipping Chablis on the veranda and talking about mutual fund performance. I mean, making small talk to random strangers. I’d rather take a .22 slug to the calf than make small talk with anyone. I’m comfortable talking to my wife, but we’ve been married nearly 15 years.

Then there’s the weather. It’s too perfect. They’re totally spoiled out there. When it rains in Southern California, everything goes into slow motion. “It’s RAINING” they tell me on the phone, using the same tones as they use to say “The Martians are INVADING.”

“My God, not RAIN,” I say. The whole time my brain is thinking, “You are soft and weak. Do not come to Iowa because you will die instantly from Weather Shock. Rain? I scoff at rain. I’ve faced down tree-snapping ice storms before, baby. Ice-felled power lines groping for my car as I drive by, pole-mounted electric tansformers spewing sparks to light my way. Squirt some tears for me over your rain.” I love the Weather Mystique. Our weather’s reputation is far more sinister than its reality, but I do nothing to discourage the myths. Keeps out the riff raff while making me look like a Klingon warrior for “surviving” our climate.

I took my job in Des Moines because I dig it. Very creative place. Great co-workers. A fair piece of the profits. OK, I’m not getting a two-year Beemer lease, free day care, spa and fitness center and dry cleaning service at the office and 700 percent employer match on my 401(k), plus stock options, like those poor working stiffs in the Silicon Valley, but it’s still good.

How unfair is that, by the way? Not only do they get the great weather, but I read the other day that potential high-tech employers have turned into kowtowing boot lickers in order to attract employees. Speaking for Midwesterners everywhere, I just want to go on record as saying, “that sucks.”

So, until my house sells, I rent a room from a co-worker down here and drive home on weekends. I take Interstate 80 west from Des Moines (in the center of the state) to the western border, and then turn north on I-29. I always get a strange sense of euphoria as I turn onto I-29. I feel like I’m back on my own turf again and I know my wife and daughters are only an hour away.

Reason enough for me to love my old friend, I-29. We have a standing date for 6 p.m. Fridays. I hope to be there early this week.

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